


Like Lovers Do

by The_Onyx_Moon



Series: From the Outside [6]
Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Casual Sex, Death, F/M, One Night Stands, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-10 05:07:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18931882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Onyx_Moon/pseuds/The_Onyx_Moon
Summary: In the aftermath of The Vanishing, you find Clint.  He reminds you what it’s like to feel.





	Like Lovers Do

The world is different after everyone’s gone.

The day it happens, you’re across the globe on a business trip.  A simple, overnight business trip that you promised you’d be home from in time for your son’s bedtime story.

Your flight is delayed due to the disappearance of the pilot and half the crew.

You wouldn’t have made the initial departure time anyway.  You’re too busy ringing your husband half a million times to no avail.

They were gone.

Your husband and son, vanished without a trace like half of all life on Earth - an unknown to you, the universe.  And you were on the other side of the fucking world.

You do your best to move on, really, but it’s hard.  No, it’s impossible.

How could you get over the life you lived simply disappearing in an instant.  He must’ve been terrified.  You often find yourself wondering who went first - in your limited moments of clarity.  Moments where you aren’t completely useless and wasted on some cheap booze to try and drown the pain.

A new bar every night, a new country every week.  New faces who are trying to drown the same pain.

Four years after The Decimation, you hardly recognize yourself.  A woman that the old you would pity and avoid at all costs.  A woman that does things that the old you would be ashamed of.

You’ve lost track of what day it is - or rather, what _night_.  Your sleep schedule has been upturned, the sun something you hadn’t seen in days.  You warm the bed of a new stranger each night.  Sometimes sex is involved, but mostly you just hold each other.  You and you nightly strangers simply hold each other in silence until some it feels like some semblance of normal.

Never do you speak.

Until Clint Barton.

* * *

A nameless bar in Mexico is your stomping ground for the evening.  It smells of smoke and sin, much like the rest of the lawless land that Earth has become.  It’s obvious that this bar is different than the others.  A sense of danger looms heavily, heavily armed men at each door.  The cartel run the show here.  The added danger actually makes your heart beat just a little bit faster and it’s a sensation you’d missed and almost forgot.  

Bloodshot eyes that sting take in the dingy atmosphere - the bodies bumping and grinding.  Inky, black blobs of blur among the flashing neon lights.  You get pulled in almost too easily, clammy lips gliding along your neck.  By now, you’re numb to it all.  Just another sensation that became part of the motions.

What isn’t part of the motions, however, is the sudden explosions that suddenly rock the building and your body.

Hands clamber for purchase as debris falls.  The viscus waves of people dissipate, knocking into one another as they struggle to escape.  Your own heavy limbs drag along the floor, and even over some of the men you’d seen guarding the doors.

Their guns are scattered on the floor, their lifeless eyes staring blankly into the abyss as you scramble for cover.

Their blood coats your hands.

Your heart hammers.

You feel alive again, but for once, you wish you didn’t.

Several minutes of heavy gunfire ring throughout the club as a shadow of a man weaves through the shadows and takes out the cartel one by one.  It’s with the sickly ‘plop’ of the final, bloody body that everything dissipates.

The screams no longer echo through the club, a ringing silence taking their place.

When you peak over your makeshift cover, the bar is empty - save for one man who’s pouring not one - but two shots.

“Sorry you had to see that.”  His clipped voice startles you, but not nearly as much as his eyes do when they lock onto you.  “I didn’t hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it.”  You scoff.

“Didn’t you?”  He raises a single eyebrow, knocking his liquor back easily.

“You’re still alive, aren’t you?  Trust me, sweetheart, if I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.  I don’t miss.”  Your eyes trail over his weaponry, noticing the distinct lack of firearms.  There’s a small sense of amusement that bubbles in your chest when you realize he’s only packing a bow and arrows and a sword of some kind.  He slides you the remaining shot.

You take a seat beside him.

“And here I thought my night would be boring.”  You chuckle, relishing the familiar burn.  “So,” you hiss through clenched teeth.  “Who’d you lose?”  He cocks a brow.

“That obvious?”  You shrug, resting your elbows against the bar as you size him up.

“Tattoos are fresh.”  A nod of the head toward the mentioned ink.  “Plus, content, happy people don’t go around massacring the cartel.”

“They didn’t deserve to live.”  He growls.  “Why’d they survive?  How is that fair?”

“It isn’t.”  Another shot is pouring and offered to you.  You clink it with his own.  “It’s shit and if I had half the skill with weapons that you have, I would’ve done the same thing.”

“Yeah?  So instead you, what?  Fuck out your guilt?”  His words bite and your lip curls instinctively.  You want so badly to be able to tell him he’s wrong but you’re too busy wallowing in the way he’s making you feel something.  Even if that something is rage.

“And the grief.”  No use in denying any of it.  “The woman who would’ve shrunk at your judgment died four years ago.  So keep it coming, please.  It takes a lot more to get under my skin.”  He hums, a smirk gracing his tired, handsome features.

“Yeah?  And how much does it take to get under your covers?”

* * *

His lips are demanding, bruising you with kisses as he slams you against the motel door.

It isn’t romantic, isn’t slow and steady.

It’s rough and needy - all of your shared grief and guilt pouring into each other’s bodies.  He calls out the wrong name - his wife, he explains.  You brush it off, warning him that you’ll cry out for your husband.

A mutual understanding.

He moves on after fucking you into the mattress and the two of you are boneless.  He leaves no note, no name.  Just sore muscles that make your blood sing.  

You need more.

After your night together, you follow a path of destruction.  Drug lords and crime bosses torn down across the continent and it’s another month before you find him.

This ghost of a man who’s got your thrown over the hotel room desk after you cornered him in another bloodied bar.  He explains that his daughter, Lila, was the first to go.  Right fucking in front of him.  Then his wife.  His sons.

You tell him you don’t know who went first.  That you were halfway around the world when it all happened.

His wife’s name isn’t said this time, but he still doesn’t ask for yours.

You don’t mind.

It isn’t until the third time that he asks you your name.

“Why should they get to live?”  He rumbles in the post-coital haze.  Strong fingers dig into your waist as he pulls you closer in the bed.  Your own fingers dance across the ink on his arm and chest.  “Why did he spare them and kill innocent fucking children?”

“Don’t torture yourself.”  You chastise.  “You’ll never find the answer you want, and it’ll just eat away at you until you lose yourself.  Trust me, I know.”

“Who were you before?”  You cock an eyebrow at that.  “Who’s the Y/N I never got to meet?”

“If I tell you, will you tell me about the Clint Barton who was a family man?”  His ragged chuckle tickles your skin as he rolls atop you once more.

“Truth be told, I’d rather we stop talking altogether.”  A giggle against his lips, your hips chasing his own as he rubs against you just enough to tease.

“I’d be ok with that.”

* * *

It’s in Japan that you see another woman.

Standing in the rain, watching him slit the throat of a worm of a man.  She stares with hardened eyes and you find yourself wondering at her story.

Jealousy claws at your throat, tasting like bile when her hand interlocks with his and he fixes her with a look far more intimate and familiar than any he had ever granted you.

“Who was she?”  You ask when his lips trace the collum of your throat.

“A friend.”  He answers.

“A friend like me?”  His eyes burn into your own from their reflection in the mirror.

“No.  I don’t have any other friends like you.”

“Me either.”

“Good.”  He growls, ripping the buttons of your blouse clean off and open.  “Your mine.”

“No, I’m not.”  You challenge, turning in his arms before shoving him down on the mattress.  Your tattered garment is abandoned on the ground, soon followed by the rest of your clothes and his.  “You’re not my husband.”  You snap and scrape your nails down his scalp.  “And I’m not your wife.”

A hiss as you sink down onto his cock.

The familiar sting has your stomach flipping.

He feels nothing like your husband did.  And you feel nothing like Laura did to him.  But it feels _good_.  It feels like  _something_  and you aren’t willing to share that with anyone or lose it to anything.

“Her name is Natasha.”  He explains, fingers digging into your thighs as you bounce with abandon.  Strong fingers wrench your hair back, gouge into your skull.  You wail at the sting, your walls clenching down on his steely cock.  “We fought together.”

“When?”  You gasp, hips twitching after a particularly rough thrust.

“Always.”  Snap, snap, snap go his hips as they drill up into your pliant body and you’re mewling with every move.  “She came to recruit me.”  He chuckles at some joke that you don’t understand, but don’t bother to ask for clarification.

Suddenly you’re on your back, nails in his shoulders for stability.

Your head bumps the headboard as he doubles down on his efforts to get you both to the edge of pleasure.

“We might be able to bring them back.”

Your hand makes contact with his cheek before you can stop it.  Your palm stings and your heart shatters.  You glare at him, teeth bared and dare him to say it again.

“Don’t you dare tease me like that, Barton.  It isn’t fucking funny.”

“No,” he grunts, falling to his forearms above you.  “It isn’t.  And I ain’t teasin.”  Like always, that familiar tension in your belly builds, ramping up and up with every perfectly time thrust.  “There isn’t a guarantee.  But there’s a chance.”

White explodes behind your eyes, your toes curling, your walls fluttering.  You’re a moaning mess beneath his body and moments later, he’s spilling into the condom inside of you with only a few grunts.

“Then you bring them back.”  You pant, shoving him off of you and retrieving your torn clothes.  “You bring back my family and we never see each other again.  And if you can’t, you meet me right back here and fuck me until I can’t remember that you gave me this hope.”

This hope that burns in the back of your mind, threatening tears at your long dried out eyes.

He nods, dressing before moving to the door.  But first, he reels you in with the first real, intimate kiss the two of you have ever shared.  Not a kiss because they’re desperate for release but a kiss because you mean something to him, even if you aren’t sure what that something is.

And whatever it is, he’s that something to you too.

“I mean this in the best way possible, but I hope I never see you again.”

“Yeah,” you breathe against his lips.  “You either.”


End file.
